


relativity

by GayFrankensteinsMonster



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Early Mornings, Gen, Insomnia, M/M, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 02:13:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9051208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GayFrankensteinsMonster/pseuds/GayFrankensteinsMonster
Summary: Wash can't sleep, because he knows that time isn't fucking real on this god-forsaken spaceship. He attempts to deal with it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> RvB! Secret Santa! This could be so much better but I'm bad at writing!   
> This is a gift for eiodolonally on tumblr and man that's a url I've forgotten like ten times. They wanted Church/Wash and I hope I made this sorta shippy enough? They wanted schizophrenic Wash and I'm like hey, love that headcanon, so I kinda, like. Had to.   
> Anyways! Aaaaa. I don't know.

Time was relative on a city-sized spaceship with synthetic daylight and round-the-clock training exercises. Because of this, sleep was somewhat of a precious commodity. Freelancer wasn’t a stress-test, sure, the soldiers got  _ enough _ sleep, The healthy soldiers. The normal, good at their jobs, non-Wash soldiers. 

Wash was having a very difficult time getting to sleep. He stared up at the ceiling, trying to focus and organize his thoughts. There was scraping from inside the wall, which wasn’t really helping, but he ignored it and steadied his breathing. In for seven seconds, hold for seven seconds, out for ten seconds. Repeat. In for seven seconds- The scraping stared up again and Wash groaned, fisting his hands in his hair and sitting up. He stood, crossing the bunk to bang his fist against the wall to stop whatever was inside it. He’d tested it before, he knew that the noise wasn’t coming from the bunk on the other side. There weren’t space squirrels in the walls. It wasn’t someone playing a fucking prank on him. He thumped the wall, one more time for posterity’s sake. He couldn’t sleep. There was no way. 

Wash made his way to the locker rooms after remembering to pull on his undersuit, avoiding the people roaming the halls at this hour. His armor was unceremoniously removed from his locker and locked on, helmet sliding over his head and clicking. Closing his eyes, he let out a breath. Blue light flickered on in front of his eyelids, and he blinked. The readout on his helmet glowed and floated across the visor. He tried to focus on them, read the time and status of his armor, but the letters slanted and sloughed out of his field of vision. Fuck. Well, time is an illusion anyways. He held his hands out in front of him, examining the scuffs on the gauntlets. The metal was pitted in places, hard rubber on his fingertips catching along the yellow lines as he traced the pattern. His neural implants twinged, a message blinking in the corner of his readout. He closed his eyes, steadying his breathing before trying to focus on the text. 

_ Training session scheduled for 0400 hours.  _

He hadn’t scheduled that. Or- No, had he? Wash didn’t remember. It’s possible he did. “Early morning” training sessions sounded like something he’d try to push himself to do. But he couldn’t put his finger on when he’d done that. Was he missing time? He didn’t think he was missing time. He could recount most of what he did the previous day, there were patchy parts, sure, but-

Well, he already had his armor on. If he had the room to himself, he might as well do it. Couldn’t hurt. He laced his fingers together and rested his hands on top of his helmet, meandering his way out of the locker room to find the main training room. He muttered to himself just to make noise, distracting himself so he wouldn’t strain to hear the scratching in the walls again. It wasn’t like there was something following him in there. Right? Right. There wasn’t anything in the walls that was following him. That would be just- That would be stupid. He stopped walking in the middle of the hallway, biting down on his bottom lip and looking down at the floor. His foot tapped intermittently, fingers drumming the top of his helmet. 

No, he was fine. This was fine. He caught his tongue between his teeth and puffed out his cheeks, trying to focus on something. He wasn’t being followed. It was more or less four in the morning. He was going to the training room. 

When he entered it, he paused again, fingers curling and uncurling. Now what. 

The simulation kicked on, the room lighting up and glowing. A projection popped up in the middle, silvery and blue and throwing off beams of light. 

“Hey, Wash.” 

He was confused for a much longer amount of time than he should have. To be fair, though, Alpha had no reason to be here. Was this one Alpha? The Alpha AI should have been running maintenance on the ship. Did this make sense? No. It didn’t. Wash fiddled with the clasps on his helmet, and the projection held up a hand. 

“Dude, you came here to run through the training simulation. Do you want to do that or not?” 

“Obviously! I just don’t understand why-” 

“It’s not recommended to do this thing when you’re supposed to be, I don’t know, asleep. I’m supervising.”

“I don’t need anyone to supervise me.”

“Tough shit, kid, run the program.” 

The projection flickered off and Wash found himself alone in the room. Dammit. Goddammit. He’d just wanted to do this on his own. He should’ve had that option. He didn’t need a blue babysitter hovering over his shoulder to run the goddamn program. No, he couldn’t think like that. Not because it was rude or anything, no. Because if Alpha jumped into his armor he’d know what Wash was thinking, and might ramp up the difficulty on the simulation, or file some kind of report, or hell, just erase him from any online record, or- 

“Wash.” 

He blinked, shoulders dropping. He’d wound himself up. God, he had to stop doing that, there was no way it was good for his health. One of these days he would wind himself into such a paranoid frenzy that his heart would explode. Back to being chill. Try to calm down. Three rings of glowing green projected discs lit up, Alpha’s voice echoing over the speakers. 

“I’ll run the program and make sure you don’t work yourself too hard. Doors are locked from in here, don’t have to worry about anyone interrupting you.”

“You locked me in here?”

“No, Jesus- I locked the doors from the inside. You can get out if you want. I’m just saying you can be alone if- If that’s what you’re lookin’ for. You can train. God, y'know. I try to do something nice-” 

“Thank you.”

Wash spoke quietly, twisting his fingers into the grooves of his arm-plates. Alpha was silent for a few seconds, before buzzing over the speakers again. 

“No problem, man. Carolina has the room at 0700, so you better get started. I’m online if you want to talk or- Whatever.” The speakers quieted again, and he seemed to be waiting for a response. “Or not, do what you like. None of my business what you get up to.”

“It kind of is.” 

“No, no, I think that’s wrong. I’ll check my job description again, but I’m pretty sure this is out of the goodness of my own heart. Metaphorically.”

“Metaphorical goodness?”

“Metaphorical heart. Come on, Wash. Keep up. Seriously though, Carolina will throw a fit.”

Wash laughed shortly, waving a and dismissively at the speakers. 

“Fine, stop distracting me.” 

He could do this. His shoulders squared, and he made his way to stand in the middle of the projected targets. 

Three.

Two. 

One.


End file.
